I recently was lucky enough to head up to Portland, OR (thanks to Vans) to check out the The Vans Off the Wall Gallery Show, which opened at the Breeze Block GalleryFriday July 15, 2011. It was one of several art show Vans has curated featuring some artists that they work with. Artists Jay Howell, Tim Kerr and Russ Pope were in attendance as well. So I headed up to meet up with them, and also got to stop by to check out The Idea Board Show 3 which opened at the Together Gallery with works by Jay Howell, Mark Warren Jacques, Benjamin Edmiston, David Wien, Casey Grey, Timothy Karpinski, and Doodles.

So this is my second go-around re-typing this post, so sorry if I forget anything. (totally got deleted first time around f*$#k!) Here's the flyer for The Vans Off the Wall Gallery Show that I was headed up to Portland, OR for. I was really excited to check out Portland since I've never been. Also, a good reason to visit some friends and see a lot of the places I work with.

I headed up Thursday morning and met up with my friend and illustrator Brooke Weeber who was putting me up for a few nights while I was in Portland

Here's some of her works on paper - mermaids, bears, and muscle men! We were meant to be art buddies!

We biked around town, and she gave me a nice ol' tour of Portland. I followed Brooke around to some local stores that sell her posters and cards.

I always hear Portland is raining, but that night it was nice enough to have some IPA's and a bonfire.

Okay, so the next day I checked in with Mr. Jay Howell who was up at the Mark Spencer. We hi-fived and then decided on some breakfast. Egg, bacon, and hotdogs. . . yeah I had one too.

Jay and I had some time to kill before the opening that night. We were going to meet up with his buddy and artist Tim Karpinski as well as stop by a place I was doing a project with called Pinball Publishing. It was a nice day, and we figured how bad would it be to walk there?

It was on the other side of the bridge, where I actually just came from. haha. Again, clear sunny skies. I even got a sunglasses burn.

Jay is bigger than any cab they have in Portland. Maybe we should have gotten on at that point.

Finally decided to catch a cab, who dropped us off on "Grand" street, which is great and all, but it sucks when you're headed to "Grant street. Death march continues; we stop off at a Goodwill to buy Vitamin water. Hey man, we were dehyrdrated. haha. Oh yeah, I should have bought this book.

Jay and I had some time to catch up on our death march to Pinball Publishing. Here's Jay's new tattoo by Paul Urich who Jay tattooed in return. Jay told me he gave him a dolphin that said "fun boy." haha. Sounds like a rad tattoo actually, especially if Jay gave it to you. There's some photos of it on Ruth's blog.

With our Vitamin waters out and our bladders on full, thankfully we finally reach Pinball Publishing. It turns out that Francois of Pinball Publishing and Jay are old buddies from SF. I had recently became aware of Pinball threw a project I'm working on with them that involves illustration short stories. I'm doing "To Build A Fire" by Jack London.

Francois and Jay jibber-jabbering it up.

Tour of the Pinball Publishing space.

Francois showing us one chapman book they're putting out. Looks it was Rip Van Winkle

After our tour of Pinball, we caught a cab over to Alberta street where Tim Karpinski's Together Gallery is. Jay was currently in the show The Idea Board 3, so we wanted to drop by and check it out.

If you get a chance to visit Portland, then you gotta stop by Together. It's a rad space with a front room, studios in back, and a patio as well. Check out those Jay Howell skate decks.
This is a caption -- Check it out - zinespotting time. WHOSE GOING EMPTY OUT THE CATBOX??? by Mel Kadel & Travis Millard, The Last ChanceKids by Pacolli and a zine by Mildred.

Tim took us to the back room to check out the studio spaces. Together Studios.

Tim shows us the studio spaces and work area.

Some boards that Tim put out with Jay's handywork on it.

We hung out in the back, where we had some much needed beer time.

Jay's amazing bottle opener! King Shit of Fuck Mountain. haha.

We cruised over the alley to check out this piece.

Where we ran into artist Tim Kerr and Beth who were also in the alley taking photos.

Before heading out to Tim's house, where they were skating and hanging out before the show, Jay and I sneak in next door to check out Ampersand. They've got readings there, releases and a nice collection of books.

We arrive at Tim's pad, and we follow him to the ramp. It's just behind this white van he says. I've heard that one before.

His backyard area is amazing. . . seriously sweet. One side back house, motorcycle, and boat.

Other side - skate ramp and folks drinking. My kinda of place.

Jay chills out and checks out the skate session in progress

Tim and his financee.

Tim skating the Jay Howell art deck.

Skate session in progress.

Doubles.

She was killing it too.

Radio.

Beer Barrel.

Just happened to be filming the music when this happened.

Tim showed us this camper shell thing he's renting out to visiting folks. Wake up and skate the ramp. Not a bad deal.

Or you could stay here.

After skating the ramp, Mark chills out on the phone with a beer on a motorcycle.

They told me I should go check out the inside of the house. I heard Tim had a mean owl collection.

I think Tim said he had a piece from almost every show he had at the gallery. . . but who knows I was sort of drunk. I remember seeing this Ryan De La Hoz amongst many others.

Jay and I got ready to head out for the opening . . . I wrote the address on this dude's arm so they wouldn't forget. I should have written it on the beer. Anyhow, I recall hopping in a cab, stopping at a bar, getting in a cab, stopping to get a pork sandwich, getting back in, and then getting out

We saw the Breeze Block Gallery sandwich board, and we knew we were on the right track.

Some folks from the gallery.

I think Jay was pretty excited to be there.

The Vans Off the Wall Gallery Show at Breeze Block Gallery. During the opening Sun Foot would open.

Owner Paige Prendergast fixes a few more things before the opening.

We grab some beers in back with these dudes.

Arthur Lindsey and Jay Howell getting close.

Paige and Jay before the show.

Folks start rolling in.

Artist Russ Pope who also came up for the show chats with some buddies.

Photographer Tatiana Wils and Justin Wills cofounder of Society6, a really cool site that makes prints, shirts, and etc, who I got to meet for the first time. Super awesome people.

Shady dealings in the back room. Ha-ha. Tim Kerr is getting Chris to color in a piece he made.

Don't change a thing dude

Jay drew a piece and traded it

Paige Powell and Paige Prendergast of Breeze Block Gallery

Artist Mark Warren and his lady.

Jay Howell, Tim Karpinski, Noah and Brent.

I went to snap a photo of Jay's wall drawing, and he jumped in.

Arthur Lindsey, Noah, Russ Pope, and buddy.

Also we ran into Nieve and Daryll Peirce. I had first met Daryll when we got a booth at the Alternative Press Expo in SF. It was good to see them in Portland.

Tim Kerr had a book available at the opening.

Chris J. and Arthur. Dead eyes. haha.

Arthur put Russ to work by having him sign a stack of posters from the show Arthur curated called Mercury 7 and the New 9.

They had some shirts in back available. I should have grabbed one. Jay Howell collaborative shirt with Vans.

This guy was blading by with some SLAYER flyers or something, and he was heading inside

where he slayed Chris Johanson who holds the SLAYER flyer.

Then we all went out and I don't remember much. Here's a photo I have of Tim driving away in a cab.

Jay let me crash on the floor.

We woke up the next day, not feeling too bad. Check out time was sooner than we thought . . . so we hustled out. Jay's all ready to go. He's got his name embroidered on his bag. Lucky guy.

We met up with my old SJ buddy Brian who came up from Seattle. We took him to have some eggs, bacon hotdog breakfast and then for some beers by Voodoo Donut. Then we headed back to Breeze Block, so Jay could get some interweb action and grab his sunglasses.

Jay gave us one of his rad books! Pages From Books, Vol. 1 which you can get at Needles & Pens. You guys are lucky.

We're traveling a little bit back in time. We ran into Tim and Beth before they were headed out.

Jay flew out later, and I headed to pig roast.

I think I was feeling not so good . . . here's a photo of me trying to get the next person exiting out of the "Honey Bucket" with Andrea, Brian and Jeff.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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